Mercedes Benz India retains top slot despite marginal fall in sales

In spite of a marginal fall in sales due to ban on diesel vehicles for most of the year and demonetisation, world’s largest luxury carmaker Mercedes could retain its foothold in domestic market for the second year in a row by selling over 13,000 units in 2016.

For the Pune-based Mercedes-Benz India, this is the second consecutive year of selling over 13,000 units in annual sales and the company sounded optimistic about 2017, given the strong momentum in December and January.

The company has been maintaining that it would be surprising if it crossed last year’s sales numbers, as most of the year was wasted due to the Supreme Court ban on over 2000-cc diesel vehicles in Delhi and NCR, which constitutes about one-third of its market, and then note ban in November.

Mercedes-Benz India sold 13,231 units in 2016, marginally down from 13,502 units in 2015 when it toppled compatriot Audi to become the No 1 brand in the country.

This comes as an additional icing on the cake for the company as its parent has overthrown homegrown rival BMW to become the world’s largest luxe carmaker after more than a decade by selling the highest units in history.

In 2016, the company had launched 13 models, one more than what it had initially planned and added three more models to its local assembly line, taking the total number of locally assembled models to eight now.

In luxury sedan segment, the C-Class sedan remained the highest selling car for Merc in the year, followed by E-Class and S-Class. However, the sports car and performance brand AMG and the Dream Cars achieved double digit growth, underlining Merc’s dominance in performance car segment.